The city wall is an important symbol of the transition from tribal civilization to urban civilization. For ancient China, there were almost no cities without walls. The higher the wall is built, the easier it is to defend and the harder it is to attack.
However, whenever we visit these ancient city walls, we will find that almost all of them have the same feature, with a row of low walls with concave and convex shapes. It has a name, also called "parapet or parapet". Liu Yuxi, a great poet in the Tang Dynasty, wrote a set of poems about homesickness in Nanjing, which said, "The moon was in the east of Huaishui in the old days, and the parapet came late at night."
Why is the concave-convex wall called the female wall instead of other names?
Functionally, the concave-convex wall can play the role of lookout, archery counterattack and cover defense. The Interpretation of Names written in the Eastern Han Dynasty explains the "female wall" as "the city is above the wall, which is called arrogance, while ... it is also called the female wall, which is not as good as the city." It means that the concave-convex small wall is humble and does not have the status of a woman, so it is named after the female wall.
But this statement has been rarely mentioned since the Eastern Han Dynasty. On the contrary, the word "sex worship" has gradually become popular. In ancient wars, they mostly attacked the city rather than fought on the battlefield. Therefore, in urban architecture, sexual worship is also reflected. Ancient architecture imitates the shape or weaving pattern of human organs, not only for viewing, but as a sacred object to worship and worship.
Building a city in the shape of a woman's shadow, calling the small wall on the city a "female wall" and building a concave-convex shape are all in the hope of being protected by God and winning in the war.
Then, why did sexual worship in the war appear in the form of women? This is because most of the people who participated in the war in ancient times were men, full of yang. In order to prevent the enemy from attacking or defeating the enemy, they have to move out negative "women", hoping to control Yang with Yin. Especially in the era of hot weapons, artillery and muskets appeared on the battlefield, and the huge lethality dwarfed the cold weapons.
Without good countermeasures, some soldiers guarding the city would actually do something that seems incredible today. People who have read Lu Xun's A Chang and Shan Hai Jing should be impressed. Chang, the servant girl of Lu Xun's family, said to him, "When long hair takes over the city, we will also be captured. When soldiers attacked outside the city, Long Mao told us to take off our pants and stand on the wall in rows so that the cannons outside could not be released. If you want to put it again, it will blow up! "
There are too many similar phenomena in history, and there are many records of peasant uprisings in the late Ming Dynasty. The content description is straightforward, so I won't go into details here. Those who are interested can browse online.
Nowadays, with the process of urbanization, more than 95% of the ancient city walls in China have been destroyed by the expansion of the city, and few people can apply for inheritance, which has to be said to be a painful thing. At present, the well-preserved ancient city walls are Xi 'an, Nanjing, Shouxian, Suzhou, Pingyao and other cities.